Free Speech for Conservative Students?

By

L. Brent Bozell III

May 11, 2013 - 11:29am

It sounded like a freedom-of-religion case when a Columbus, Texas high
school relay-race team was disqualified from the state track
championship because Derrick Hayes pointed heavenward after his team won
the race. That would seem odd in a red state like Texas. It turned out
that officials were so strict, they warned runners to make no hand
gestures after the finish line. Hayes had apparently pointed forward,
and then upward, and for that, he was out.

It can be tough to be a student in today’s public schools. Never mind
restrictions on the schools. It is becoming impossible to express a
socially conservative or Christian viewpoint – as a student. Across the
land, everyone is ordered to welcome without a discouraging word any
expression of the gay or transgender variety. But try to say the G-word
or oppose abortion, and watch someone lower the boom.

– In Minnesota, a sixth-grade student was prohibited by her public
school from distributing pro-life pamphlets during lunch time. One of
the fliers read, “Save the baby humans. Stop abortion.”

A few days later, she was called into the school director’s office and
told that some students find pro-life fliers offensive and that she was
no longer allowed to pass them out during or after school hours, even
if other students requested them. In an e-mail to the student’s parents,
the school’s executive director claimed that the content of the fliers
was inconsistent with the school’s educational mission.

“The school has a right to censor students without violating their free
speech,” the director wrote. “In short, public schools have every right
to prohibit student speech.”

Lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on
May 3. “Public schools should encourage, not shut down, the free
exchange of ideas,” said Legal Counsel Matt Sharp. “The First Amendment
protects freedom of speech for all students, regardless of their
religious or political beliefs.”

–
In New Mexico, a group of evangelical high school students aligned with
the “Church on the Move” lost a round last month in their fight to give
classmates two-inch “fetus dolls” with a pro-life message attached. A
three-judge panel of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the
school district’s authority to stop the doll distribution. Why?

The 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community
School District established that students have free speech in schools,
as long as it doesn’t disrupt school discipline. According to Education
Week, teachers complained that students who had received the roughly 300
dolls that were handed out were throwing the dolls across classrooms,
using them to plug toilets, and in other ways causing serious
disruptions in the school day.

There are no reports of any legal or disciplinary actions taken against the students responsible for vandalism.

– In Michigan, the Students for Life chapter at Eastern Michigan
University applied for student fee funding to host a display on campus
called the Genocide Awareness Project, a traveling photo-mural exhibit
which compares the contemporary genocide of abortion to other forms of
genocide. EMU denied the funding request because they deemed the photos
of the aborted babies and the event as too controversial and one-sided.
But they’ve granted money to left-wing activist groups discussing
“welfare rights,” as well as race-issues and abortion rights groups.

Of course, all the old anti-prayer bias remains. In Arkansas, the
Riverside School district in Lake City decided not to allow a sixth
grade graduation this year. Saying a prayer at this ceremony had never
been an issue before. Predictably, the school district decided to cancel
the graduation ceremony after just one parent came out and protested
the prayer – and the school received a letter from the American Civil
Liberties Union.

Sometimes, there’s still a win. A Texas state judge has just ruled that
banners displayed at football games by cheerleaders at Kountze High
School quoting Bible verses were "constitutionally permissible." At
first, the school district stopped the banners after the Freedom From
Religion Foundation protested. But after a public meeting in February,
the school board of trustees issued the weakest of resolutions in which
it wrote that the district was not required to ban messages on school
banners that displayed "fleeting expressions of community sentiment
solely because the source or origin of such messages is religious."

That “fleeting expressions” language can spur a smile. Just as federal
judges have ruled that it’s acceptable for broadcast television networks
to air “fleeting” expressions of profanity while children watch at
home, schools in religious communities might allow impressionable youth
to be exposed to “fleeting” expressions in favor of God.

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